Wikipedia defines iBeacon as the trademark for an indoor positioning system that Apple, Inc. calls “a new class of low-powered, low-cost transmitters that can notify nearby iOS devices of their presence”. The beacons themselves are small, cheap Bluetooth transmitters. Apps installed on your iPhone listen for the signal transmitted by these beacons and respond accordingly when the phone detects them.

Imagine the fans at a stadium with their ticket and seat number automatically pulled up as they walk inside an arena. Imagine the passengers at an airport heading towards the ticket gate with an automatic notification popup that pulls up their mobile boarding pass ticket ready for inspection.

For example, did you know that the majority of today’s professionals would relinquish their television before they let you take away their smartphone? Or that given a choice between Internet access and sense of smell, an incredible 43% would hang on to the Internet. Now there’s the true meaning of a 6th sense.

These are just a couple of the provoking (and some may say disturbing) findings.

You pull up to the gas pump, wait in a long line, and then fumble with your debit card and the touchscreen. Once at your hotel, you search mightily to find a parking spot before struggling with the ticket payment system. And then comes check-in, which entails more waiting in line at the front desk to get the key, before discovering that the key doesn’t work. When you finally get in the room, it’s set way hotter than your preference.

OK, none of these experiences are major hardships, let alone life threatening. But taken together, along with so many other time-wasting aggravations — or business friction — they do take a toll: on energy bills, productivity, and nervous systems!

Thought-leaders, implementers and creators across public sector, private business and education gathered for the second annual Internet of Things World Forum (IoTWF) in Chicago. It was an opportunity to see real examples of the Internet of Things (IoT). While the buzz was about IoT, CMX provided meaningful insights like average registration times, visitors in various zones by the hour, and corresponding dwell times. It was possible to predict which vertical is more likely to adopt IoT first, based on device count, dwell time and traffic patterns.

Cisco Connected Mobile Experiences is a solution that lets organizations leverage their existing Wi-Fi infrastructure for business analytics, and transform the way they connect with their mobile end-users. The Cisco CMX solution consists of Detect, Connect and Engage, which work in unison to create an end-to-end mobile experience for the user while providing business benefits to the enterprise.

Here are some of the reports we generated and the observations we’ve gleaned.

Registration

One of the common reports from CMX Analytics is hourly visitors and dwell time. This “Registration” chart provides a view of total number of visitors and corresponding dwell times for the entire day by the hour. The key takeaway is that most participants were registered by 9:00 a.m. and the average wait time was 15 minute. In business terms, this is a great sign for the operations side of the events team, which was able to maintain a consistent average wait time despite the clear spike and variation of registrants entering the zone.

Breakout Popularity

One of the widgets on the CMX Analytics dashboard can be configured to show comparative device count by zone.

Notice the widget on the bottom right hand side: a comparison of device count by breakout rooms. This provides an insight to which breakout session was most popular.

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